As Elon Musk faces criticism from consumers for his handling of the social media site, Meta is anticipated to launch its own Twitter competitor as early as Thursday.
According to a listing on the Apple App Store, Threads, a new app from Meta, is “expected July 6”. It will function similarly to Twitter as a text-based platform where users may post messages that can be liked, commented on, or shared.
Users will be able to effortlessly transfer their usernames and followers to the new app, and threads will be directly linked to Instagram, Meta’s well-known photo-sharing network. The App Store description for Threads stated, “Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow.”
Whether the software will be released on Android or the rollout’s precise scope are also unclear.
Meta’s new release poses a direct threat to Twitter as numerous users actively seek alternatives to the platform owned by Musk since he bought it for $44 billion in October.
Due to Musk’s less strict approach to content management and his desire to make disruptive changes to the system, some users and advertisers have complained against Musk or left Twitter.
In an effort to “address extreme levels of data scraping [and] system manipulation” on the network, Musk said he was temporarily limiting the number of postings users may access on Saturday. This move drew a barrage of criticism. Linda Yaccarino, the newly appointed CEO of Twitter, was also criticized for saying nothing about the situation.
As Musk reduced staff and made expense cuts in an effort to improve the company’s profitability, Twitter also experienced a number of disruptions. Mastodon, Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky, and Donald Trump’s Truth Social are just a few of the other platforms that have failed to gain followers among users since Musk’s takeover of Twitter.
When Meta made its own version of the disappearing vertical video snippets made famous by smaller platform Snap, it made headlines for actively imitating competitors in an effort to maintain market dominance. Recently, Meta has been promoting a brand-new short-video format called Reels that is comparable to ByteDance-owned TikTok.
In addition, Musk said on his platform that he was “up for a cage match” with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has recently remade himself as a jiu-jitsu expert. This is when the deep-pocketed Meta released its Twitter-like app.
Later, as a response, Zuckerberg said he was going to fight his wealthy opponent. Both the date and the time of the match are unknown.
Meta and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
